THE world got its first peek at the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan last week. The images were taken as NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft swept past the moon at a distance of less than 1200 kilometres, the first of many fly-bys planned in the next few years.
The images show a landscape that is clearly still being shaped. Although Titan must have suffered numerous meteor impacts in the past, its surface today is largely crater-free. Somehow these scars must have been eroded or filled in. “We are seeing a place that is alive, geologically speaking,” says Charles Elachi, head of the…
